Landing Place
by tiltherewasyou
Summary: Just a way to tribute Cory Monteith through a Faberry story. A detailed look into the Finchel/Fuinn/Faberry love triangle because I'm struggling that Quinn will not be in the tribute episode. Follows the 3 through 7 parts of their story over the course of 12 years. Warning: Character death.


Author's Note: I wrote this sort of as a way of dealing with Cory Monteith's passing a few weeks ago. I've always been a Quinn fan so writing for her is pretty easy for me at this point. I just wanted to tribute him, even though in all technicalities this is a Faberry story. I don't own Glee, or the characters, or the quotes/lyrics that the parts are titled for.

Landing Place

Part 1 – "Unless you love someone, nothing else makes any sense." - E.E. Cummings

You and Finn first meet when you're 14.

You're kind of new in town, but your recent changes, mixed with your (also recent) discovery of gymnastics, make you a likely candidate for cheerleader, and your meeting Finn – tall for his age and athletic - at Freshman Orientation only pushes you to try out even more.

Finn is sweet and he reminds you of a time when your life was a lot happier and a little less complicated. He smiles a boyish smile when you walk over and introduce yourself. This introduction is a first for you, because until now, you've never had the confidence to speak unless spoken to. But when he smiles that smile and says, "Hi, Quinn, I'm Finn Hudson." You decide that Quinn is definitely a name you like to hear in reference to yourself.

You and Finn start dating 2 months later, after he catches the winning pass of the Homecoming football game, and that year's Quarterback passes his MVP award to Finn. You're not silly, you know that Finn will be Quarterback next fall, and if the pompoms Lily had handed you that night were anything to go by, you will be head cheerleader.

You and Finn are so easy, at first. He walks you home after school and he kisses your cheek before he heads on to his house. When the winter comes and it is too cold to walk, he rides your bus with you. Your mom – who seems so excited at the prospect of you having a _boyfriend _– lets him stay for dinner sometimes. In those early days, you and Finn laugh and you fall honestly in love… or as in love as two 15-year-old kids can. 

The next year, when you get pregnant by his best friend and you try so hard to convince him the baby is his, you're holding on to that feeling… to being 14 and walking home from school and first kisses and gentle smiles. But when she tells him the truth you accept the fact that Finn was your landing place, but maybe you deserved to have that place yanked out from under you, and Finn definitely deserved a life where he could fly all on his own.

Part II – "You forgive your first love anything." – Rachel Berry

Finn forgives you when you are 16. The 2 of you start dating again a little later, and for a while it's so happy. Walks home have been replaced by him dropping you off, or sometimes coming over while your mom works late. You share time of blissful happiness, but eventually issues from the passed 2 years creep up. You don't trust him, and he certainly doesn't trust you. That love that was once there has turned into a muted longing, and he wishes you were Rachel, because at least she could enunciate that longing.

You hate yourself for even having to admit it, but on the days that you don't secretly wish HE were Rachel, you wish that you were Rachel, too. It's not a surprise when you're 17 and they get back together. What is a surprise is how hurt you feel for the wrong reasons, and how when Rachel smiles now, it doesn't meet her eyes.

Finn and Rachel date, you get drunk with Santana and Brittany and pretend not to cry yourself to sleep over Finn and maybe over Rachel and at how life has somehow grown even more complicated in the last 3 years… and that neither you or Finn can look each other in the eye when you are both at the same party or you pass each other in town.

Part III –  
"And you lean in for your last kiss

Who in this world could ask me to resist

Your hands cold as they find my neck

Oh this love that I've found, I detest" – Mumford & Sons

You love and hate Finn when you are 18. You've discovered a lot about yourself in the last few months. You've dealt with a lot, and you've been accepted into Yale. One of the less pleasant discoveries, but one that you're coping with, nonetheless, is the fact that in this complicated mess that is your love triangle, you've somehow fallen in love with your "enemy" turned best friend, Rachel, who Finn has been attempting to try to bind himself to in marriage. You still love Finn as the best man you've ever known, though.

So when he calls you the night before regionals – the night before he and Rachel are getting married at the freakin' _courthouse _of all places – and begs you to come to their ceremony, citing that it means so much to Rachel and then explaining that he really needs you there, as a friend, you're helpless to refuse. You love him for loving Rachel. You hate him for loving Rachel. You love him because he is your friend – and this couple that you once wished to loathe have somehow become your landing place. You see a time in the distant future – the very distant future, once you're over Rachel, and more over Finn (because this wound still stings in spite of what you tell him) - where you and whomever you end up with will go to their place for dinner, where your children could be friends.

It's no surprise that you're thinking about the ways that Rachel and Finn have made you a better person when you're hit by a truck on the way to their wedding.

It's also no surprise that they are the second couple from the Gleeks (because Santana and Brittany really are family) to visit you after you wake up. Finn smiles that boy smile and for a second you remember walks home from school during freshman year… but that truck sent you for a loop and you're free falling and you need a more certain landing place.

Rachel holds one hand and Finn holds the other – and just this once you are the peak of the triangle – not one of them.

It doesn't last for long though, and soon you're walking again and graduating and kissing Puck and trying to figure out how to get over everything.

You aren't surprised to hear they've broken up for good, but you are surprised by your response.

Later in that jam-packed 18th year, when Rachel hasn't e-mailed for several weeks and she still hasn't visited, you make the mistake of sleeping with Finn. He comes to visit at Yale, so sad over what happened between him and Rachel – and you're both a little mad at her. He's mad because she loves him too much but still won't stay with him, and he's mad at himself for letting her go. You're mad at her for not caring about you enough… and at yourself for not being able to let her go.

It's a 1-time thing, and you both agree just to keep being friends afterwards. In a way, it is a fulfillment of everything you needed but didn't want to know. Both of you are in love with the same person – not each other and maybe it never was each other. In another way, you and Finn are soulmates in the most basic sense. When he gets on the train the next day, you promise to keep in touch and to help each other through your heartbreaks – he just doesn't know that he has once again caused yours.

Part IV – "No I don't hate you, don't want to fight you. Know I'll always love you but right now I just don't like you." – Relient K.

You and Finn have a blowout when you're 20. You and Rachel have been dating – officially – for a little over 3 months. He, Sam, and Puck are in New York for a show and it seems like a good time to have Finn over to Rachel's for dinner.

You are so nervous on the train ride down to New York. Your life in New Haven and your life with Rachel are both so peaceful. You haven't actually fought with anyone in over 2 years, and you also haven't talked to Finn in around 6 months. That doesn't change the fact that he is one of your best friends now, and there's this possibility that he still loves Rachel.

But he doesn't love Rachel like you do, and you just know that this thing with Rachel is worth the risks. Because Rachel sees like Finn never could, and you support in a way that Finn never offered to.

So when he sits down at Rachel and Kurt's kitchen table, and you walk out of the kitchen with dinner – a casserole that you had made with Rachel in mind – he's both shocked and happy to see you, albeit a little bitter that he would be sharing his time with Rachel with you too.

And when Rachel reaches across the table and intertwines your fingers as she explains to Finn that the two of you have fallen in love, your reluctance to look into his eyes takes you back to the summer before senior year – a time when your pain was deep and when you saw Finn you couldn't stand to meet his gaze. The hurt you see echoed there now is about 5,000 times worse than when he received the news that Puck was the father. It makes you think that the betrayal of a friend, even though this hardly counts as a betrayal in your book, must sting so much worse than the betrayal of a girlfriend you don't really love anymore.

Because you and Finn are friends – he was your first friend in Lima and he was the first friend to visit at Yale. He has always, always given you the benefit of the doubt, even when it really sucked for him, until now. This is the first time you've actually been on the winning side of this triangle in what seems like forever, and you want so desperately to keep that advantage, but you also want to keep your friend.

So when he yells, you sit there and take it. And when he takes off, you follow him into the street, tears running down your face, shouting your apologies.

And when he turns around and smiles the same boyish smile that for once doesn't reach his eyes and asks for time, you are helpless, once more, to refuse.

Because your landing place has shifted, but this time his running won't mean you've lost him in any way forever.

Part V – "I'M IN LOVE, and now you've made a fool of me. . . I'm sorry, I said, I'm really sorry." – Charles Bukowski

Finn doesn't forgive you until you're 22. You've both seen him a few times since that night, but never together and never alone. The Gleeks are all in your new apartment – your, as in you and Rachel – celebrating the New Year because Santana and Brittany are getting married in 2 days. You're so happy for your best friends, and you can't wait until one day that's you and Rachel – but for now, while you're in grad school and Rachel is workshopping for a play, you know you have to wait.

It's well passed 2 AM – and everyone is either asleep or chatting tiredly in their respective places. You sneak out to the balcony to catch your breath – your apartment isn't big enough for 15 or so people to cohabitate. Finn is there, sitting with a beer and watching the street below him. He's got this look on his face of a boy in awe – and you wonder, not for the first time, if Finn could ever survive in this city, if it would excite him or exhaust him of all of the life he has in him; life which you sadly admit to yourself is there again for the first time since that night 2 years ago.

Your next thought is to turn around and give him his moment, but when he says, "Quinn" without turning around, you know you should go sit beside him.

The 2 of you stay there until sunrise, talking things through and asking for forgiveness, eventually laughing at the absurdity of not being friends for the last 2 years. Rachel comes out at around 6 in the morning with coffee and blankets. You and Finn had sat in companionable silence for the last half hour before you looked over and he was asleep.

There sits your landing place. You and Finn were soulmates in a way. Rachel and Finn were soulmates in a way. But when you look over at Rachel you know she would be your landing place from now on – and that the two of you were soulmates in every way – and that Finn was okay with that now.

When he leaves 3 days later, it's with promises that he will be there when it comes your turn. And you know this to be his blessing, the ultimate forgiveness that maybe you didn't deserve, but was afforded to you anyway.

Part VI – "Marry me, today and every day." – Train

Finn walks you down the aisle when you are 24. It doesn't escape your attention that this is a miracle – because the last time you and Finn were at a wedding where one of you was a participating party you had ended up paralyzed and the woman he was going to marry had ended up falling for you.

But Finn's fiancé is here, and Rachel is beautiful, and even though maybe a few years ago you never dreamed that this would be your reality – he smiles at you and silently offers you his arm – and the one person whom this marriage should probably hurt the most is right there in the center of it – giving you away to be married to the love of your life. You think of that phone call the night before Finn and Rachel were to be married, and you think about not being able to refuse him or her anything, even then, and you remember how blessed you are to have your first real friend blessing your love with his once bride-to-be.

The thought had crossed your mind to ask Puck in the absence of your father, but Rachel had wanted him for her wedding party and in the end, you knew Finn was the obvious choice. When he picks you up and spins you around, you're glad to have your platonic soulmate by your side as you make the biggest commitment of your life, and when he later gives his speech and charges you and Rachel to take care of each other – you remember your landing place, and you remember the guy that will always be your best friend. You share a dance before Rachel cuts in, and you laugh at how symbolic that is of your whole life – how Rachel cut in for you and how eventually she cut in for him, too.

It doesn't escape you that things shouldn't have turned out as well as they have – that Finn Hudson has every right to hate you. That Finn Hudson and Rachel Berry were the obvious pick, but that fate had blessed you. When you see Finn sneak off with the real love of his life – you thank the God that still must love you that Finn Hudson had somehow ended up being more of a brother to you than anyone else.

Part VII – "Love is how you stay alive, even after you are gone." – Cory Monteith (1982 – 2013)

You get the phone call you never wanted to get when you are 26. You can barely understand Puck through the sobs, but he says something about an accident and the next thing you know, you and your slightly pregnant wife are on the way back to Lima.

All of the original Gleeks are in Finn's room when his wife of only over a year had requested that the doctors pull the plug. Brain dead was something that many years ago, you had referred to Finn as in a rude remark. But you know now how untrue that statement is. Finn Hudson was creative and unique in a way that had once paved the way for you to be the same. He never stopped being exactly who he was, and in a way, you always envied that.

He was your soulmate, your best friend, platonically the love of your life.

You hold your wife and Puck and Santana close while the machine takes a last breath of life for Finn.

You know all of you and the world have lost something that it will never replace, never replicate.

As you let the emptiness run through you later that night on the Berry's back porch, you look up to the stars and think of the 2 out there named Finn Hudson. The first had been a boy's way of making Rachel fall in love enough with him to marry him. But the other, that recently joined the sky just a few short hours ago, was a man who knew that the greatest gift you could give anyone was your love and forgiveness. You are visibly shaken at the thought that Finn Hudson could have chosen not to forgive you – time and time again. But men forgive, and Finn Hudson had always been the best man that you had ever known.

It's just that now, your landing place was in the sky.

So you crawl into bed beside your wife – whom in a way, Finn had given you permission and power to love in all of the ways she deserved, which was every way. As you wrap her up in your arms and you cry silently, but together, you think of the 2 of you, fighting over Finn, you think of Finn and you, fighting over Rachel, and you think of the last 4 years – having Finn as a best friend and Rachel as a girlfriend, fiancé and wife. In the last 12 years, Finn Hudson had been a starring role in the triangle, and you can't help but smile as you think of him, and how he forgave you and loved you anyway, and how well everything had turned out, in the end.

6 and a half months later, when the doctor hands you a little boy who has eyes like Rachel's but a boyish smile that reminded you distantly of your landing place, and asks you what his name should be, you and your wife both smile and simultaneously say, "Finn William Berry-Fabray", because while the world could never ever replicate Finn Hudson, your son would grow to become a man because Finn Hudson had once shown you how to grow.


End file.
